This has been a concern of mine for awhile now, and it’s finally happening. My only close friends are people I have grown up my whole life with. We’re all suburbanite cishet crackermen who were well-off enough to never have to struggle with potentially starving or becoming homeless; predictably, this has fostered some garbage politics, mainly trumpanzees and blue MAGA. With Cheeto Hitler removing whatever shreds of a mask of humanity the Great Satan had left, I now have my blue MAGA friends calling out my trumpanzee friends for their support of Drumpf. The trumpanzees have been silent since the inauguration, and today the group chat has been split.
It was already a terrible form of liberalism for me to have let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship with people who, if I wasn’t already close to, would throw in the cuck pit. There is still a major issue in that the most vocal of the friends I’m still in touch with are blue MAGA to the point that, if I’m to grow a spine and actually stop letting things slide, I’m worried that I’ll be smeared as fascist myself and lose the close friends I have because pushing back against great man theory takes that make Orange Satan out to be a uniquely evil force instead of recognizing the evil of the system that produced him will invariably come across as defending Trump. I’m bad at making myself go outside, let alone making friends, that I’ll have very few IRL people in my actual life.
Edit: The issue seems to have been deeper than politics, and the sides reconciled. However, the baseline seems to be “no outright evil political beliefs”, and Marxism Leninism is considered evil by most burgers.
The people who are willing to split up a community over their electoral politics are not likely to be won over, you should probably not expect to be able to save all of them. That said don’t blame yourself, they are the ones who can’t take the grill pill and just be normal around their friends.
Your MAGA friends bizarrely sound like the more conciliatory part of the group, it sounds from your description that they understand things are tense and are trying to avoid stirring the pot.
You don’t think there’s a portion of the group that would be amenable to instituting rules for hanging out/chatting to just not bring up politics? I feel like the “no religion no politics” canard is common for a reason, a lot of people understand it’s volatile and are willing to avoid the topics to preserve their relationships.
Because to be clear, you’re not failing the revolution by not having an argument with them about neoliberalism, nor would you be spearheading it by owning them with facts and logic. But a group of friends who care about each other and are willing to work together to defend their common interests can be valuable, especially if things keep getting worse.
Not of course that you should tolerate everything. Maybe this is too wishy washy to be helpful as advice but you have all the context to make the judgment call I think.
There’s a Trotskyism joke to be made about splitting the group chat.
They’re more passive suburban trumpanzees. There not going to go off about some QAnon sounding shit, and they’re offline enough to not have caught the chan brainworms. Even without this though, I think their relative chillness is due to them having less of a perceived threat since politics is ultimately just a game to them, as they are petite booj/highly paid professionals (one is a failson insurance kulak, one an HR/recruiter traitor of the working class).
The blue MAGAs are seeing capital take its mask off on live TV. They give just enough shits to be concerned about this, but their attacks of Trump all still rely on American exceptionalism and other reactionary angles. You’ll see them calling Trump a commie traitor to the US; that there will be “USSAR (United Soviet States of America Republic)” level censorship; that refusing to condemn Trump is “unmanly” (a stance that itself affirms patriarchy); that pointing out that what Trump is doing is unconstitutional over and over again is le epic own (as if constitutionality has ever stopped the American Regime from harming someone it really wants harmed). If I hear one more joke about muh increasing egg prices, I am going to become the joker.
Most of the time in person we don’t discuss politics. The blowing up happened largely because some of them are trumpanzees even when we don’t see them.
I often tell myself that Combat Liberalism is only meant for people in party cadres. Still, I don’t think I’m using my privileges to further the cause of liberation as much as I should, and I believe a big obstacle getting in my way for this is that my social circle is basically entirely suburban petite booj/labor aristocrackers. The large privileges and spaced out personal fiefdom homes of me and my suburbanite acquaintances do a lot to discourage community building.